And is it me, or does 550 tons of stored enriched-uranium yellowcake speak to at least the intent to resart his nuclear ambitions after the sanctions
were lifted?
Which he was bribing the french to push?

this is 'news'.
this yellowcake was declared to the UN way before the war started. it is ENRICHMENT that makes uranium a threat. as long as there are no enrichment
facilities, countries are ALLOWED to posses yellowcake for energy development.

and, if they had all that yellowcake, WHY on earth would they need to ship more from Niger, and WHY on earth would valerie plame need to be
'outed'?

Thanks for the post. I looked into these claims of having found WMDs, and it turns out that the information you are posting is misleading. While 500
munitions were found, they were all pre 1991, and from old regimes. In fact, the weapon were useless.

If you read the Foxnews story that went along with the article, you will notice it says this,

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not
in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the
rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

Thats right, even the defense department speaking on behalf of the administration admits these weren't the WMDs we went to war for. We knew these
munitions existed in 1991 during the Gulf war, and left them there when we left because we didn't think it would be a problem. Bush claimed Saddam
had built new weapons, which clearly the official stance from the administration is still that they have found no evidence of that.

Rep. Santorum was the one who reported these documents as a smoking gun, and when he was told that Jim Angle a senior defense department official said
these findings were not why we went to war, and these weapons were worthless and couldn't be fired, Santorums only response is "I'd like to know
who that is"

Not only that, but Bush's appointed Iraq study group admitted in 2004 that there was a af finding of old unusable WMDs, but overal Saddam had
destroyed his stockpile. Bush agrees in his own word here:

"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical
weapons stockpile in 1991," the Iraq Survey Group reported in 2004. "There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical
munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it
should WMD be discovered."

"The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did
not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there," said President Bush in October of 2004, as cited at Think Progress.

"There is nothing new here," said Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) in a statement. "Nothing in this report, classified or otherwise,
contradicts the Duelfer Report, which assessed that we would find degraded pre-1991 weaponry in Iraq.

Harman also blasted what she feels is selective declassification by the Bush administration. "When the intelligence community disseminated classified
intelligence conclusively establishing that one of the Vice President's much-touted justifications for war was blatantly wrong, my request to
declassify that information was denied," she added. "When the request comes from Republicans and can be spun in an attempt to support a Republican
position, however, the answer is markedly different."

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

(same source as above)

Just to give you an idea of how insignificant these findings were, the exact same types of degraded unusable WMDs have been found lying around
unaccounted for in... Washington DC!

The discovery of poorly accounted for stocks of WMD is not unheard of around the world. Researcher Jonathan Tucker detailed in 2001 for the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists the discovery of a significant number of chemical weapons shells in Northwest DC.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

(same source as above again)

So if you are asserting that the weapons you are referencing is justification for war, then the international community should declare war on the US
too.

So were there WMDs found. Technically, but they were unusable remains that we had left them keep after the Gulf War with no problem. To this day the
administrations official findings are that Saddam destroyed his stockpiles and was not developing more. Even the defense department admits that there
was no WMD justification for the war, as similar findings of unusable WMDs have occurred in the US.

I feel its unfair to claim these findings as proof of anything. Everyone knew at one point Iraq had chemical weapons. The claim was that Saddam had
developed knew ones that was the reason for the war. Not only did the investigation find that Saddam had destroyed his stockpiles, but they throughly
proved that he wasn't building new ones. Hence, it was a lie. Finding old unusable remains of WMDs from the 80s hardly seems to justify you
claiming that we need to admit there were WMDs

Originally posted by Shazam The Unbowed
And is it me, or does 550 tons of stored enriched-uranium yellowcake speak to at least the intent to resart his nuclear ambitions after the sanctions
were lifted?
Which he was bribing the french to push?

This is also misleading. Although there was yellowcake found, it was pre Gulf war, and was safeguarded.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been
stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official
said.

So how is yellowcake in Iraq that we knew about since 81 and had been documented after the Gulf War proof that Saddam was trying to develop WMDs. In
fact, no further yellowcake was obtained, which seems to suggest he wasn't building weapons. We knew it was there, so if it was such a problem, why
didn't Bush Sr. take care of it in the Gulf war?

The other problem with Bush lying about this is the fact that one of the reasons we went to war was that Saddam was trying to by yellowcake from
Nigeria, but this to turned out not to be true. From the same article:

The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote
that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

So it seems that as of now there is not one piece of evidence to suggest Saddam was trying to develop nuclear weapons or more WMDs. Hence, we were
lied to. extra DIV

Did Saddam use WMD against his own people? That depends on who you ask, there are reports that those weapons were used by Iran, not Iraq. There are
also reports that the weapons used back then were supplied by the US Government.

I love the poster who asked what rights have I lost.... How about Posse Comitatus and Habius Corpus for starters? How about my right to have to take a
phone call without the Government listening in? You know the right to privacy? Maybe you dont realize it or maybe you still think that the Government
only listens to "terrorist" or Brown people across the globe. What is really sad is that our rights are being stripped away and some of the sheep
will not realize it or deny it is happening until they have a need for those rights, then realize they don't have it anymore. Why must people wait
until it is too late before they take notice of the world around them?

What about my right to protest? My right to free speech? these are rights of the people as described in the Constitution. We dont have these anymore.
Instead you have "free speech zones". Can anyone showme in the Constitution where it says, "You have the right to free speech only in designated
areas?"

you do realize that Bush would not have gone to war with out the approval of both of these governing bodys dont you?

right or wrong the war wasnt just one persons choice..

I guess you weren't really paying attention in the run up to the war. In October 2002 Bush reached what was described as a "deal" with the house of
representatives over the use of force against Iraq. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, when discussing what the deal was said, and I quote "the resolution
does not require him (Bush) to get UN approval before action. If the president determines he has to act unilaterally to protect the American people he
can."

So, contrary to your statement, Bush would've have, and was planning to, go to war in Iraq without the approval of the UN. He was also saying that
the UN was not fit for purpose, because it wasn't following through on it's own sanctions.

After the deal with the senate, Bush sought and called on the UN to impose military action on Iraq if it didn't allow UN weapons inspectors into
Iraq, and/or it was proved that Iraq had WMDs. There were two problems with this.

1) Hans Blix was the UN weapons inspector. Bush himself blocked a deal between Hans Blix and Iraq for Blix's team to go in and assess their WMD
capability. So Bush was not even allowing Hans Blix to search for WMDs, whilst at the same time calling on the UN to impose military action on Iraq
for not allowing Blix in, when Bush was stopping Blix going in.

2) When Hans Blix said there was no evidence which could conclusively prove Iraq had WMDs, or was intending to use them, Bush ignored this and, in
collusion with the CIA and British intelligence, cooked up unsubstantiated and later proven as false evidence that Iraq had WMDs and could launch them
within 45 mins (false UK evidence), and that Iraq had bought uranium from the Niger (false CIA evidence).

So it's plain to see, Bush got the senate to back him going into war with Iraq alone if necessary, then blocked the UN weapons inspector from doing
the job he was supposed to do to allow Iraq to comply with the UN Security Council sanctions, then provided false evidence to the Senate and UN on
Iraq having WMDs to prove Iraq had broken the UN Security Council resolution and therefore, the UN should respond or be disbanded, because it wasn't
implementing it's own rules on sanctions and policy breaches, and therefore the US would have to act alone.

This can all be referenced and confirmed in minutes from UN meetings and MSM reports from the time leading up to the war. And it's as plain as day
that the US government was planning to invade Iraq come hell or high water, with or without the UN.

I know we might not like to hear it, but this is what happened, and sometimes the truth hurts.

The Above Top Secret Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.